A Year of Plausibly Live

Five.. or maybe even six years ago, my General Manager at KFIV sent out an eMail asking for ideas for ways to increase our digital presence. The company wanted “outside the box” ideas for increasing web hits and general web presence.

At the time, we had multiple studios that were not in use except for three or four hours a day. In the case of KFIV, the only live show was mine from 3-6pm. Everything else on a weekday was a satellite feed and even on weekends, we were only live from 8am to 12pm.

People were always asking me how they could get their own show because they had a lot to talk about. So… I picked my own brain and I came up with an idea that I presented to my PD.

It was simply this, use these studios to let people create their own podcasts for on demand programming that we could then host on our website. Local shows, local people, local talk and local stuff all on the local Talk Radio Station’s web site. Available 24/7.

To make a long story short, the idea was taken up the chain, and I was told that it was “an interesting idea.” But, as you can guess, it was ultimately rejected. The only reason that I was ever given, and that by my PD, was that these podcast shows were seen as potential competition to our “regular” shows (i.e., Rush, Sean and Beck) especially since we were transitioning to the iHeart Radio platform – which was assumed would increase web hits by itself, no further help needed.

So, when I left radio a year ago, Podcast 99 was still percolating in my head.

I didn’t leave radio to start a podcast, but it seemed like an idea that I could live with and still keep my busy schedule of raising Ben. One sunny afternoon I was sitting at a local park watching Ben play while perusing my favorite magazine, WIRED. In that particular issue was an article about a guy who had done what I was contemplating, he left a radio gig (NPR) to start a podcast. He had never looked back, and the encouragement I took from those few words still carries me today.

So, one year ago today Plausibly Live, The Official Podcast of The Dave Bowman Show was launched. Yeah, we’ve tweaked the format and lengths a bit over the year, and yeah, I’ve dropped a few bad words into the show (couldn’t do that on the air!). For all of that, I have had simply the best year of my life.

Time with Ben has been precious and wonderful, and the encouragement from the listeners has been overwhelming. Frankly, I’ve been able to do some things that I never would have been permitted to do on radio, and it’s been a whole lot of fun.

And now that we have a year under the belt, it’s another opportunity to remind each of you that if YOU have something to say, there’s a place for you at Podcast 99. It doesn’t matter if it’s political, left or right (I’m talking to you, Pepper!), sports, religion, book, hobbies, advice (good or bad!), film reviews or even something that we never imagined. There’s room for you here.

And it really doesn’t even matter where you are. Yeah, we focus on the Central Valley of California, but we’ve got a show from Nebraska. We can help you get the right set up to do it from pretty much anywhere. Well… anywhere on the planet with an interwebs connection, anyway.

And as for me and for Plausibly Live?

Well… almost eight years of various incarnations of my own radio show taught me two things:

Enjoy the moment, and:

Every day is a new day to start fresh.

I’m just getting started with what I want to do with Plausibly Live. This year, I want to take it “Live” on the internet. I now have the phones to do live calls again. At some point, I’d like to add a sidekick or co-host. I am notoriously hard to work with, especially for free, so it has to be that “right” person. But if you think that you could be the one, drop me an eMail and let me know why you think you can be the one. We’ll talk about it and see if you might be “the” fit.

So here’s to our one year anniversary. And more important, to many, many more years of podcasting fun and entertainment.